Hello there everybody! First of all, apologies for the EXTREMELY long wait. We know that going without ANY information for a very long time can be annoying, confusing and disappointing, but we felt like spending time on game development instead of writing blogs would be worth it. Regardless of that, we finally took some time to prepare a blog… So here it is!

Due to the long wait, there is a lot to talk about and we do not really know where to start.
So we have decided to divide the content into several blogs. In the coming weeks we will be talking about Gameplay, Graphics, Sounds, Historical Accuracy, Planned Features and more. So, let’s start with the most important part of any game…

Gameplay Part 1/4
Most of you will probably be familiar with the kind of gameplay we offer in Napoleonic Wars. As you probably also know, BCoF is intended to copy this type of gameplay while simultaneously expanding on it. As such we are not going into extreme detail on how the game is supposed to play and will instead talk about some of the more unique or different features of the game. This blog entry will cover the very basics of our system.

Stance/Mode System
To start with, we would like to talk about our “Stance/Mode System”.
In BCoF players will be able to switch between 2 stances for melee only weapons and Revolvers/Pistols and 5 stances for Rifles/Muskets. Each stance will be graphically distinct, which will make it easier for enemy and friendly players to recognize what stance another player is in.

Additionally, there are 2 modes a player can be in. Firing Mode and Melee Mode.
Melee only weapons (Swords etc.) will be locked to Melee Mode, and Rifles will be able to switch between Melee and Firing Mode.
Some stances can only be accessed when in a certain mode, while others (Kneeling) can be accessed in both Melee and Firing Mode and currently have no visual distinction. However this will be changed in the future, so that no matter what stance a player is in, it is always easy to tell what mode he is in. It is “just” a matter of getting the animations for it...

Movement System
Just like the stance system, we wanted players to be able to do more. In BCoF, players now have access to 4 different movement speeds.
Ranked from slowest to fastest they are: Crouched Walking < Walking < Running < Sprinting.
We have also designed a movement system with movement momentum. This means that players will not be able to immediately speed up and/or slow down. Instead if a player wants to go from idle to sprint, he has to go through walking and running first, which means that it will take him 2 seconds or so to reach full movement speed. As as side effect, wheeling your company left or right will now look slightly better, as players can adjust their speed more gradually.

Crouched walking and sprinting are purely intended for movement. While players will be able to shoot while walking and use melee weapons while walking or running, they will not be able to perform any other action while crouchwalking or sprinting. Crouched walking is intended for sneaking and/or staying in cover and sprinting is simply meant for quickly getting from point A to B. When sprinting, players can not strafe and will have to steer their character with the mouse.

We have removed jumping from the game, as it serves no real purpose. Instead, players will be able to climb over/on certain objects.

Obviously there is plenty more stuff that any game has to have, like using doors, dropping items etc. so we will not go into more detail about that. We allow zooming in and out in the 3rd person view, and the tilde key will allow you to look at your player from all angles.

Roleplaying
We have added a few purely cosmetical features for roleplaying, like presenting arms or surrendering. We will add more in the future and hopefully we will also find ways to actually implement some gameplay functionality for them.

Donations
We are extremely thankful to all the donators we have had over the years. You have helped us a lot and your support over the years means a lot to us. However we have decided to no longer accept donations. This has several reasons.

When we announced BCoF, we still were in the belief that we not only could finish this game in just 1 year, but also that 60k would be enough to fund the entirety of the game. At the time, Kickstarter was extremely popular and we thought that we could do something similar. However, we were more than unprepared and we should not have announced the game in such an early stage.

By today we have received slightly more than 17k of donations, of which we have refunded a large amount. We have spent FAR more on the game than we received in donations and even if we would have reached the funding goal, it would not have been enough. It would have helped, but the fact is, that large sums of money would still have to be invested from our personal funds.

Donations are an hassle to keep track of and the donation rewards we have set up are not only silly, but are difficult to realise. Who the hell wants or can use a physical disc nowadays?
As such we have decided to no longer take donations. We will still keep the Donator Subboard up and anyone that has donated will get his reward or can request a refund.
However, we will no longer accept any money from the community. From now on, the game will be completely funded by our own personal funds.

Thank you for reading this weeks Developer Blog.
In the next blog will be talking about Gameplay.